I’ve been working on my presentation on Multi-purpose and Expandable Worship Centers for the conference (see www.wfxweb.com ), and thought I’d also make part of this the lead article for our fall newsletter. Joan, our office manager / business development manager / bookkeeper and spiritual life director (not her real titles, but how she really functions) was proofing the text and decided to do a Google search on multi-purpose worship centers to see what others had to say. She found a few interesting things there. First of all, we (WPH Architects for Ministry) appeared more often than any other company on the first several pages of the search (twice on the first page!). This is reassuring to me of our expertise to speak on this subject to other church leaders and facility planners. The other interesting thing she found (though I could not repeat this result) was an another architect ‘expert’ stating that a church should “never build a multi-purpose worship center” becasue you can’t get good accoustics and sound in the space.
One of the things I enjoy most about what I do in designing church facilities is the partnership with God through the Holy Spirit in the design process. I try to seek the Lord for creative ideas and solutions to the challenges a project presents. This was how I landed on a prototype design which is under construction for New City Gospel Fellowship in New City, NY (just north of NYC). We had Bose do accoustic modeling of the space and came back with phenominal results. Every one of the 1,100 seats will have great sound. There are no deficiencies in the space that need to be overcome by delays or by applied wall sound absorbant panels. God is awesome in His creative abilities. And for me, I just love those moments when I feel like a son working with his father on something pretty special.
Okay, being with an acoustics and performance technologies design firm who have had great success in multipurpose spaces, I feel I can safely say that you can get quality acoustics and audio in a multipurpose space. One of the challenges is that many times multipurpose rooms are considered “interim” worship facilities and people cut budgets for the acoustic treatments or production technology not allowing for what is needed to really make the room work.
One of our sessions at WFX has to do with sustainability. In crafting the session, we realized that one of the biggest places churches could impact the environment is in building spaces that have maximized usage. Single use spaces such as choir rehearsal rooms or large auditoriums that are only used one to two days a week (and possibly cooled all seven) aren’t as effective as they could be. Multipurpose spaces could be a much better allocation of resources–especially if they are open to community use.
Pragmatically, construction escallation is going to drive many churches to rethink what they build and I believe we are going to see a lot of innovation in what churches construct over the next 10 years. Multipurpose spaces, auditoriums that are shared by the community, repurpose/renovation of existing construction…there is a lot of opporutnity.
Personally, I’m thrilled WPH is invested in helping churches maximize their resources. Rock on!
That’s a great point about budget cuts typically coming out of audio / accoustical treatment and compromising the spaces performance – plus I had not thought about the green building / environmental angle. Great comments, Cathy!